Beverages are often sold in groups, such as a pack of 6, 12 or 24 beverages. For soda and beer, these group or pack arrangements are perhaps the most popular packaging methods for retail sales. The type of packaging material used to secure the beverages may include material such as compressed paperboard, plastic, etc. Both bottles and cans are popularly distributed at retail locations in these pack arrangements.
There are few desirable or advantageous considerations in designing beverage packaging. One design consideration is to minimize the amount of material that has to be used to properly secure the beverages. Another consideration is to provide packaging with enough exposed planar surfaces so that the packaging may effectively display printing or other types of labeling for identifying the product to be sold. Yet another consideration is to provide functional packaging, but maintain some aesthetic value in the packaging.
There are a number of prior art examples of beverage containers to include the U.S. Pat. Nos. Des. 243,913; Des. 351,971; 2,289,859; 2,821,299; 4,889,245; 5,154,288; 5,450,979; and 6,615,996.
Although the 6-pack has long been a popular packaging arrangement for beverages, more recently, many beverages are provided in containers that have more than the traditional 12-ounce capacity. Many consumers choose to consume more than one beverage at one time; therefore, product distributors have recognized that providing larger beverage containers ultimately reduces the number of containers that have to be provided. However, because of these larger sized containers, traditional packaging methods have to be modified, and are not necessarily the optimum methods in which to package such larger containers.
In the beer industry, the 24-ounce container has become popular. Therefore, there is a need to provide a beverage holder which will accommodate a plurality of 24-ounce containers, yet maintain some of the desired design considerations set forth above.